January 13, 2009--University of Florida (UF; Gainesville, FL) scientists achieved a new record in efficiency for blue organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). Because blue is essential to white light and necessary to produce lighting that is more efficient than compact fluorescents yet similar to standard incandescent bulbs, "The quality of the light is really the advantage," said Franky So, a UF associate professor of materials science and engineering and lead investigator on the project.
So collaborated with UF materials science engineering professor Paul Holloway and UF assistant professor Jiangeng Xue on the research. The U.S. Department of Energy, which funded the research, reported the results on its Web site. When used in display screens computer monitors, OLEDs have higher efficiency, better color saturation, and a larger viewing angle.
So and his team's blue OLED achieved a peak efficiency of 50 lumens per watt. That's a significant step toward the goal of his project: to achieve white light with efficiency higher than 100 lumens per watt. So said the fact that OLEDs are highly "tunable"--each OLED is an individual light, which means differently colored OLEDs can be combined to produced different shades of light--puts warm, rich light easily within reach.
For more information, go to www.news.ufl.edu.
--Posted by Gail Overton, [email protected].